Lithographic composing frame



March 19, 1963 P. w. KRAUs 3,081,551

LITHOGRAPHIC COMPOSING FRAME Filed Aug. 1o, 1960 ln\\ v wmmi r m 'm .'t U" -m n 9 i m mw- Q l0 l2 l/4/3 /8 ATTORNEYS United States Patent Clitice Patented Mar. 19, 19%3 3,931,551 LETHGRAPHC CMFPSENG FRAME Pani W. Kraus, 1129 13th St. NW., Canton, @hin Filed Aug. 1li, 19nd, Ser. No. 43,742 4 Ciaims. (Ci. Sli-184.5)

This invention relates to a device for use in lithographic printing, offset printing, or other forms of printing, and more particularly pertains to a pin register lithographic plate composing and register system.

Current printing procedures includes the use of highspeed printing presses using cylinders for printing black and white or multicolor printed matter. With such presses operating at high speeds it is necessary to have sumcient backlog of orders of printed matter on h-and if the presses are to be operated on a profitable basis. An outstanding bottleneck in the entire printing procedure is the provision of accurately composed precisely registered films and plates used on the cylinders of the printing presses.

Various registry devices have been provided in the past but have been inadequate for various reasons. Basically none of the known existing registering devices are adequate for registering or accurately composing any photographic offset plate to the variable dimensions and specitications required of any printed job. That is particularly true in the precise register required for a four-color printed job.

The devices of the present invention are used to lay out or position all printed matter (such as the pages of a book) onto a lithographie plate. The devices are also used to place these pages in their proper position on the plate and to the v-ariable horizontal and vertical spacings required for any size printed matter.

The devices also eliminate manual restripping and repositioning procedures by providing intertting pins on a pin bar and slots on opposite edges of a frame with which pinholes provided in each original negative are used in composing the final positive plate.

Moreover, the device of the present invention provides a frame having longitudinal and transverse slots by which final accurate registry in either direction on the frame is quickly attained on the original negatives of the copy to be printed.

Acordingly, it is a general object of this invention to provide a lithographie composition frame for acurately composing any photographic offset plate.

It is another object of this invention to provide a lithographie composing frame which greatly reduces the time required for preparing a master imposition.

lt is another object of this invention to provide a lithographie composing frame which enables the positioning of negatives accurately into any position either for black and White or multicolor printing.

Finally, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved lithographie composing frame which lsubstantially eliminates the difficulties enumerated and which obtains the foregoing desiderata in a simple and effective manner.

These and other objects and advantages apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description and claims may be obtained, the stated results achieved, and the described ditliculties overcome by the discoveries, principles, apparatus, parts, elements, combinations, and subcombinations which comprise the present invention, the nature of which is set forth in the following general statement, preferred embodiments of which-illustrative of the best modes in which applicant has contemplated applying the principlesare set forth in the following description and shown in the drawings, and which are particularly and distinctly pointed out and set forth in the appended claims forming part hereof.

The improved lithographie composing frame of the present invention may be stated in general terms as including a rectangular member having opposite edge portions and interconnecting opposite side portions, each edge portion having closely-transversely-spaced longitudinally-extending slots, each edge portion also having closely-longitudinally-spaced transversely-extending slots, a rectangular pin bar having opposite sides, a pair of longitudinally spaced register pins on one side of the pin bar and adapted for insertion in register holes in the photographic negative, a pair of spaced aligned longitudinal tabs on the other side of the pin bar, a transverse tab on the other side of the pin bar, and the tabs being insert-able into corresponding transverse and longitudinal slots in the frame.

The preferred embodiments of the invention are illustrated by way of example in the acompanying drawings, wherein:

FIGURE 1 is a plan view of a composing frame having a register bar mounted in horizontal and transverse slots with separate negatives disposed in each quarter portion of the frame;

FlG. 2 is an enlarged vertical sectional view taken on the line 2 2 of FlG. 1;

FlG 3 is an enlarged fragmentary sectional view taken on the line 3--3 of FIG. l;

FIG. 4 is an end view of the register bar; and

FIG. 5 is a fragmentary plan view of a second embodiment of the composing frame.

Similar numerals refer to similar parts throughout the several views of the drawing.

In the drawings, a composing or layout frame is generally indicated at 1. It is a rectangular member having opposite edge portions 2 and 3I as Well as opposite end portions 4 and 5 Although the frame 1 is preferably provided with an opening 6, it may be a solid member without the opening.

As shown in FiG. 1, each edge portion 2 and 3 is provided with a series of spaced slots 7, 8, and 9 extending longitudinally of the frame 1. In addition each edge portion 2 and 3 is provided with two series of slots 10 and 11 which extend transversely of the slots 7, 8, and 9 and of the longitudinal axis of the frame. As shown in FIG. 2 the slots 7, 8, and 9 preferably extend through the edge portions 2 and 3 from one side to the other. Slots 10 and 11 likewise preferably extend through the thickness of the frame as shown in FIG. 3. However, the slots 7-11 need not extend completely through the thickness of the frame.

In FIG. 1, each series of slots 7, 8, and 9 includes a plurality of parallel slots each of which is preferably 1/16 inch wide and 1A; inch apart from center to center. Like- Wise, each series of transverse slots 10 and 11 includes parallel slots that are 1/16 inch wide and spaced s inch apart from center to center.

In addition to the frame 1 a pin bar 12 is provided for use with the slots 7-11. The bar 12 is an elongated rectangular member having a pair of spaced register pins 13 on one side and having a pair of aligned longitudinally extending register tabs 14 and 15 for insertion into aligned slots 7, 8, and 9 as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. The bar 12 also includes a transverse register tab 16 for insertion into one of the transverse slots itl and 11 as shown in FIGS. 1 and 3.

Operation and a transverse trim line, including punched pin register holes for aligning pin register holes on all negatives in a standard position. Once all ofthe negatives, Whether for black and White or multicolor, are stripped and registered to the master sheet and punched with pin register holes, any further manual repositioning or reregistering is avoided. Thereafter the pages are laid out in proper order upon the frame l with punched holes 17 for each negative l placed on corresponding pins 13 of the pin bar 12.

The register tabs 14 and 15 are then placed in aligned slots 7 and 3 which are the proper distance from abutting ends 19 of adjacent negatives 1S. Thereafter the tabs 14 and 115 of all other bars 12 are placed in corresponding pairs of slots 7 and 3 or 8 and 9, as shown in FIG. l, With their abut-ting ends 19 properly located.

Simultaneously, the Itab le for each bar l2 is placed in the particular slot lil or ll so that abutting edges Ztl of adjacent negatives 18 are in abutment with each other. Thereafter the tabs le of the remaining bars l2 are placed in corresponding transverse slots iltl and il. With the placement of the tabs ld-l in corresponding slots 7--11, the layout or stripping of the pages for proper order for printing is concluded. It is pointed out that for multicolor pages the negatives for each color are readily placed upon the pins 13 Without further adjustment for alignment as was necessary with prior layout or stripping procedures. Indeed the necessity of using pressure sensitive tape for holding the negatives in their precise positions after manual alignment no longer exists.

Thereafter the negatives are exposed onto the plate. A lithographie plate is made for each color after the negatives 1S Afor each color have been laid out or stripped upon the composing frame 1.

Another embodiment of the yframe is generally indicated at 2l in FIG. 5. It has a series of closely spaced longitudinal slots 22, as well as a series of spaced transverse slots 23. The slots 22 and 23 are similarly located on opposite edge portions of the frame 2l similar to the slots 7-11; on opposite edge portions 2-3 of the plate l. The composing frame 21 is preferably used in commercial printing jobs which have a need for a frame for laying out extremely small size Work so that more than a pair of pin bars may -be used. As a matter of fact, a pin bar yfor use with the frame 2l would have transverse and longitudinal tabs spaced from each other corresponding to the spacing of the slots 22 and 23, respectively, in the frame 2,1.

Accordingly, the composing frames l and 21 provide a new and novel pin regis-ter step-and-repeat imposition system that is designed to accurately compose any photographic offset plate to the variable dimensions and specifications required for any printed job. The system is adapted for black and White or multicolor printing. Once the original negatives of copy to be printed or art Work are photographed and accurately stripped to a master sheet there is no need to again reregister positives or subsequent copies of the original negative, thereby saving an estimated 40% man hours time in preparing a plate for lithographie printing.

In the foregoing description, certain terms have been used for brevity, clearness and understanding; but no unnecessary limitations are to `be implied therefrom beyond the requirements of Ithe prior art, because such .terms are utilized for descriptive purposes herein and not for the purpose of limitation and are intended to be broadly construed.

Moreover, the description of the improvements is by Way of example and .the scope of the present invention is not limited to the exact details illustrated, or to the speeiiic mechanisms shown.

Having now described the features, discoveries and principles of the invention, the construction, operation and use of the improved mechanisms and the advantageous, new and useful results obtained thereby; the new and useful parts, elements, constructions, mechanisms, combinations, subcombinations, and arrangements, and mechanical equivalents obvious to those skilled in the art, are set forth in the appended claims.

What is claimed is:

l. A holder for registerin Y and laying out photographie negatives of copy to be printed which negatives have spaced register pinholes, including a rectangular member having opposite edge portions, a rectangular pin bar having opposite sides, a pair of longitudinally spaced register pins on one side of the pin bar and engageable in a pair of register holes on a photographie negative, the pin bar also having at least one longitudinal tab and at least one transverse ltab on the other side thereof, each edge portion of the rectangular member having elosely-transversely-spaced longitudinally-extending tabreceiving slots, the corresponding longitudinally extending slots in each edge portion being equally spaced from the longitudinal axis of the rectangular member, each edge portion also having closely-longitudinally-spaced transversely-extending tab-receiving slots, and the corresponding transversely extending slots in each portion being equally spaced from the transverse axis of the rectangular member.

2. A holder for registering and laying out photographic negatives of copy to be printed which negatives have spaced register pinholes, including a rectangular frame having opposite edge portions, a rectangular pin har having a pair of longitudinally spaced register pins on one side and having at least one longitudinal tab on the other side and having at least one transverse tab on the other side, each edge portion of the frame having closely-transversely-spaced longitudinally-extending tabreceiving slots, and each .edge portion also having closely-longitudinally-spaced transversely-extending tab-receiving slots.

3. A holder for registering and laying out photographic negatives of copy to be printed which negatives have spaced register pinholes, including a rectangular frame having opposite edge portions, a rectangular pin bar having a pair of longitudinally spaced register pins on one side and having a pair of aligned spaced tabs on the other side, the pin bar also having one transverse tab on the other side, each edge portion of the `frame also having a number of longitudinally spaced series of closelytransversely-spaced longitudinally-extending tab-receiving slots, and each edge portion also having a series of closelylongitudinally-spaced transversely-extending tab-receiving slots.

4. The construction of claim 3 in which the frame includes an opening centrally thereof.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,921,378 Mueller Ian. 19, 1960 

3. A HOLDER FOR REGISTERING AND LAYING OUT PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVES OF COPY TO BE PRINTED WHICH NEGATIVES HAVE SPACED REGISTER PINHOLES, INCLUDING A RECTANGULAR FRAME HAVING OPPOSITE EDGE PORTIONS, A RECTANGULAR PIN BAR HAVING A PAIR OF LONGITUDINALLY SPACED REGISTER PINS ON ONE SIDE AND HAVING A PAIR OF ALIGNED SPACED TABS ON THE OTHER SIDE, THE PIN BAR ALSO HAVING ONE TRANSVERSE TAB ON THE OTHER SIDE, EACH EDGE PORTION OF THE FRAME ALSO HAVING A NUMBER OF LONGITUDINALLY SPACED SERIES OF CLOSELYTRANSVERSELY-SPACED LONGITUDINALLY-EXTENDING TAB-RECEIVING SLOTS, AND EACH EDGE PORTION ALSO HAVING A SERIES OF CLOSELYLONGITUDINALLY-SPACED TRANSVERSELY-EXTENDING TAB-RECEIVING SLOTS. 